New interface for Ask.com. Good clustering. Highlight

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30 Tips in 45 Minutes

• Mary Ellen Bates
• Bates Information Services
• mbates_at_BatesInfo.com

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1.

• Simply Google
• Excellent overview site of all Google's features
  and sites, downloads, blogs
• www.usabilityviews.com/ simply_google.htm

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2.

• AskX.com
• New interface for Ask.com
• Good clustering
• Highlights Wikipedia
• Images, news items, blogs, etc. highlighted

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3.

• Search The Web 2.0
• Lets you narrow the search using popular terms
  (trendy) or obscure terms (long tail)
• Overlay on Google search engine
• www.searchtheweb2.com

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4.

• Google Search History
• Limit your search to what you've searched before
• Is Google Big Brother?
• google.com/searchhistory

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5.

• Consider the QA services
• answers.yahoo.com
• qna.live.com
• askville.ask.com
• linkedin.com/answers
• Use with caution!

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• Use search engines' quick-answer feature
• Ask.com's Smart Answers
• Google's OneBox
• Yahoo's Shortcuts
• MSN's Instant Answers

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7.

• Squidoo
• Hybrid of a web page, interactive poll,
  Flickr-like photos, notes from readers, and a
  blog
• Great way to share resources with colleagues

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• Build customized search engine
• Rollyo.com
• Yahoo Search Builder
• Google Co-Coop
• Live.com's Macros
• Gigablast's Custom Topic Search

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9.

• Yahoo's Search Subscriptions
• Non-subscribers can search Factiva, LexisNexis,
  Wall Street Journal, Forrester, IEEE, FT.com,
  etc.
• Pay with credit card
• Limited versions of some databases
• search.yahoo.com/subscriptions

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10.

• Kosmix.com
• Vertical search engine on steroids
• Excellent clustering
• Health, Video games, Finance, Travel, US
  politics, Autos

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• NationMaster.com
• Source for national stats
• Cool tool for presenting graphical info
• Data from WHO, World Bank, CIA World Factbook,
  World Resources Institute, UNESCO, OECD, etc.

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• Use Yahoo's Mindset feature
• mindset.research.yahoo.com
• Are you researching or shopping?

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• MSN's cool synonym-suggestion tool
• Intended for helping search engine advertisers
  identify similar words and common misspellings
• snurl.com/zqyd

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• MSN's misspelling-suggestion engine
• snurl.com/zqyl

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• Consider 37signals.com
• Great collaborative resources
• Project management, to-do lists, file sharing,
  time slips, etc.

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• Ask's maps
• Both driving and walking directions
• Takes local topography into account
• maps.ask.com

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17.

• Use Exalead's NEAR/n operator
• (solar OR sun) NEAR/3 power

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• Live Academic search
• Great search results page
• Sort options
• Slider bar for verbosity
• Endless scroll of results!
• academic.live.com

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• Compare search engines
• CompareSearchEngines.dogpile.com
• jux2
• ranking.thumbshots.com
• TwinGine.com
• YahooGoogleMSN.com

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• Data visualization arrives to the value-added
  online services
• Factiva's Discovery Pane in Search 2.0

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• TouchGraph
• Finds relationships among URLs
• Uses Google's "Similar pages" function
• Finds related books in Amazon
• Uses subject terms

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• Gigablast
• Limit to multiple sites
• Gigabits clustering
• Extremely cool complex search and ranking tools
  (see Help file for syntax)

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• Snap Search
• Easy to navigate
• Visual search results
• Can interact with site within Snap
• Based on Gigablast
• snap.com

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• GooFresh
• Limits Google search to only sites recently added
  or updated in the index
• Great for doing repeated searches!
• Props to Tara Calishain
• www.researchbuzz.org/2003/09/ goofresh.shtml

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25.

• Check out podcast lectures from
• Yale
• Princeton
• UC Berkeley
• Stanford
• Johns Hopkins

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• SearchMash
• Unbranded Google site
• Cool interface
• Results sorted by web page, images, blogs,
  videos, Wikipedia
• Infinite scroll

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• Google's Topic Search
• Health, Destination Guides, etc.
• Info pros can contribute
• www.google.com/coop/topics/?showall

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• PageBull
• Metasearch tool
• Entirely visual
• Good for right-brained searchers

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• Watch Google's Librarian Center
• Blog, newsletter, teaching tools
• Tips of the Trade
• librariancentral.blogspot.com

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• OneLook
• Reverse dictionary!
• Better than a thesaurus!
• onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml

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• Mary Ellen offers two free email bulletins
• Search Tip of the Month and
• "Info-Entrepreneur Tip of the Month"
• If you would like to subscribe to either, just
  ask (mbates_at_BatesInfo.com)
• Also, check out her blog at LibrarianOfFortune.com
  

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• Mary Ellen BatesBates Information
  Serviceswww.BatesInfo.commbates_at_BatesInfo.com30
  3.772.7095